It appears that no amount of protein/sleep/foam rolling will replace the need for a recovery week. I'm still dragging so didn't do too much today. I think perhaps it was inadvisable to do drylands and a bungee cordz workout in the same day. I'll hit the gym tomorrow and then may be just resting until the meet. I may take the whole weekend off.

QBrain made my day today. I am heading to Barbados for spring break and had been worried that I'd be out of the pool the entire time -- not ideal with nationals a month away. He sent me a link with a lovely pool that even Patrick would be jealous of that is not far from our resort: http://users.sunbeach.net/bfit/comp2004.htm. I can't find any info on whether and when it's open to the public yet. I did send an email.

And my split request that had seemed to go missing has been found! So my official 50 back time this year will be .3 faster.

I tried that foam rolling thing a couple times, but it's done for...it seems like more of a workout than working out itself! And more painful as well!

Yeah, if you're sore, the foam roller can be kind of ouchy. Nothing really replaces the need for recovery though. I tend to do more foam rolling on my recovery weeks when I have more time. Much less painful than the 200 fly!

There's different kinds of foam rollers also. Some are almost squishy, like a big pool noodle, and I don't think they do very much.
I rolled Monday night after not rolling for a week+, and my legs could definitely feel it. Especially working my IT bands on my sides.

Yeah, if you're sore, the foam roller can be kind of ouchy. Nothing really replaces the need for recovery though. I tend to do more foam rolling on my recovery weeks when I have more time. Much less painful than the 200 fly!

I had a nice recovery workout tonight, as compared to what we normally do. It was nice the way coach John gave us a night off for pretty much no reason. I'm just wondering what tomorrow night will be like!

There's different kinds of foam rollers also. Some are almost squishy, like a big pool noodle, and I don't think they do very much.
I rolled Monday night after not rolling for a week+, and my legs could definitely feel it. Especially working my IT bands on my sides.

Yeah, the IT band work can really hurt!

I have a hard power system one myself. One might as well not even bother with the squishy ones.

I had a nice recovery workout tonight, as compared to what we normally do. It was nice the way coach John gave us a night off for pretty much no reason. I'm just wondering what tomorrow night will be like!

Even hard core USS teams have recovery workouts of a sort, right? I mean the yardage may be almost the same, but the intensity is eliminated. With HIT, if you don't do recovery, you'll quickly become overtrained and stop being able to throw down fast times in the pool.